Arcana Heart

"These Little Ladies Are Kicking it Old School"

Arcana Heart: These Little Ladies Are Kicking it Old School

Presentation: 7

2D fighting games haven't been a huge staple of gaming for years now, but some occasionally rear their heads in Japan only to stay there and leave us American gamers high and dry on the genre. Now here comes a 2D sprite-based fighting game, which in itself would be remarkable even without the game's risque nature. More on that momentarily.

The graphics are colorful, well drawn, and animate as smoothly as any 2D fighter ever has. Try to imagine Street Fighter 2 with sharper resolution, a solid (if somewhat cliche) anime style, and double the FPS and you'll have an idea what the game looks like. It looks good, but only if you're already a fan of the genre to begin with. If you can't stand not to look at anything that's not made out of 3D polygons, this game isn't likely to change your mind. Backgrounds are beautiful to look at, and even have two different forms (one standard, and one for when someone activates their “Arcana Force” ability), but they're just something to look at with no interaction with the characters whatsoever. It's hard to hold this as a strike against a 2D fighter though, it's just the name of the game.

Now, this game got a lot of grief from some people because they believe it sexualizes its cast of 10-17 year old girls (And ONLY 10-17 year old girls), while its defenders claim such sexualization is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Although I'm entire in favor of freedom of expression and believe the game has a right to both exist and be released here, to claim that it's entirely innocent is just plain false. It's true that the characters aren't doing anything particularly sexual, but that doesn't mean it's not still made to be sexy. It's the ecchi to the Rumble Roses style hentai.

Sure, things seem innocent enough at first. A little more innocent than most Japanese fighting games, in fact. Despite multiple characters wearing (and kicking in) short skirts, there's never even a hint that they're about to flow up around their waist. In fact you may be almost disappointed to see that a lot of the hubbub is either exaggerated to flat out made up, but then when you start to get a little deeper, pay closer attention, you start to notice little moves and poses, and ending screens with conspicuous camera angles that often mimic sexy anime stills down to the particular detailing of some of the girls.

For instance Kira is a character who fights wearing nothing but a swimsuit (they justify this with her riding a giant water monster into battle, which ironically makes her the game's heaviest and most powerful character despite being one of the youngest at 11 years old), and while she doesn't do a lot to raise alarms, there are certainly frames where she strikes certain poses, such as her beginning-battle pose where she stands in a towel holding her swimsuit and then changes into the suit in one frame, when she pulls her head out of her water-droplet after being defeated, falling to her back with her legs open, doing a wrestling move where she strikes a sumo-like pose, and particularly after her “Armageddon” and “Kirageddon” Super Moves where she turns her back to the camera to adjust the back of her swimsuit.

There are tiny things like this dotted throughout the game that belie the purposefully innocent look of the game. It's fanservice that carefully walks the line between acceptably excusable and overly sexual (which would have probably gotten it banned from many places outside of Japan since the girls are, on average, 13 years old), and while it doesn't do anything particularly offensive I can understand the very nature of the game rubbing some people the wrong way.

It is what it is though, just know what you're getting.

Audio: 4

The game's music is pretty forgettable, and its voices are still in Japanese, so I'll just have to call the sounds average. However, the game loses an extra point for some of the most annoying “metal clang” effects I've heard since the SNES era. Fighting Fiona is an exercise in irritation and frustration that goes far beyond the gameplay because of those metal boots making those horribly grating sound effects with nearly every step.

Gameplay: 8

Good, deep 2D fighting games can be difficult to come across, often times they fall into the realm of button-mashing beat-downs with all the strategy limited to “hit punch now”. This game however has a very diverse set of characters who all have their own play styles that are actually complimented by their special moves and personalities. Kira's massive water droplet pulls off all sorts of wrestling moves or just overwhelms with sheer brute force (but can't move worth beans), while Lilica the rollerblading half-demon has an assortment of moves that allow her to keep moving in all directions launching lightning-fast surprise attacks, even dropping out of the sky with a special throw. The most unique of these characters is probably the one who keeps the soul of her dead sister in a creepy mannequin that she stores in her briefcase and can let loose to double-team opponents and pull off special moves or keep her locked up to give her own attacks longer reach and more power.

Complimenting the already great diversity of the game's fighters is the Arcana system. Not only do you select your fighter, you then choose their companion Arcana, each of which adds special abilities such as third jumps (every character can double jump), or special moves like projectiles and traps. All of these Arcanas' abilities are mapped to a special button, so memorizing their moves along with the characters' moves isn't too overly difficult, and mastering a specific character/arcana combination can yield tremendous results. Each character does have a default Arcana that compliments their skills nicely (Lilica is linked to Tempestras, for instance, a Wind-based Arcana that makes her movement range even greater), but you can always mix and match to find the combo that works for you.

As far as modes go, there are only 3. Story, Arcade, and VS.

Story Mode is a short trip through the game's story, which involves parallel universes whose borders are collapsing… and sometimes just a character wandering around ditching school. Before each fight you get a choice between three other fighters to do battle with, with a couple of mandatory fights leading up to the final bosses, Fiona (Why did they have to make her clanging butt mandatory?) and Mildred, who is the unplayable wizened old sage of the game at 17 years old.

Classic Mode puts you through a more traditional series of rounds against the game's fighters, and unlike in Story Mode, in this mode the Arcana each girl uses will be randomized, resulting in a fresher experience compared to each girl using the same arcana each playthrough like in Story Mode. There's no particular reason to play through it though unless you enjoy shooting for a high score, because all of the bonus content and endings are earned through the Story Mode.

VS mode is what it always is, a round between two fighters, though you can play 1-player against the AI. Not much to say about it.

The game does have some amount of surprising depth to it, not relying too heavily on its pretty girls in lieu of fresh and fun gameplay ideas. It's a genuinely fun game to play.

Story: 5

Technically the story is about the collapse of the barrier between two worlds that were separated long ago, and those special few Maidens who can link with the power of the spirits (Arcana) who exist beyond the veil of our reality. You'll never learn that by PLAYING the game though (you'll need to look in the instructions), since most of the characters' stories seem to focus on them wandering aimlessly, with some amusing dialogue that doesn't actually reveal anything. Lilica spends her entire story goofing off and avoiding school, and randomly fighting people she has no reason to fight. Her encounter with one character has the other character commenting that they'll be late for school, fight ensues, Lilica comments that she thinks she'll skip school today. At the end you'll wonder why she bothered going to fight the last boss when all she's done so far is pick fights with random people.

The stories are amusing and have some sly humor that can be genuinely funny, but I can't help but feel that maybe they could've been a bit more than amusing. That's just me, though, I'm sure.

Features: 7

The game features artwork galleries for the stages, characters, and Arcana, along with music galleries and all sorts of extra goodies for you to browse through at any time. You probably won't spend a lot of time here, but as bonus features they're pretty neat.

Overall: 7

The game's theme of young girls duking it out makes some people understandably nervous, but thankfully the game doesn't rely entirely on its presentation to appeal to the masses, featuring a well-implemented and quite unique gameplay system that gives a lot of room for experimentation with personal playstyles. It's a fun game to play, that's really all there is to it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/08

Game Release: Arcana Heart (US, 04/10/08)